Source: http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/weekly.html
Al Gore calls for a day of prayer and reflection, and bothering your neighbor:
So please, take this day and the milestone it represents to reflect on the fragility of our civilization and and the planetary ecosystem on which it depends. Rededicate yourself to the task of saving our future. Talk to your neighbors, call your legislator, let your voice be heard. We must take immediate action to solve this crisis. Not tomorrow, not next week, not next year. Now.
Scientific American laments the plants
This measurement is just the hourly average of CO2 levels high in the Hawaiian sky, but this family’s figures carry more weight than those made at other stations in the world as they have faithfully kept the longest record of atmospheric CO2. Arctic weather stations also hit the hourly 400 ppm mark last spring and this one. Regardless, the hourly levels at Mauna Loa will soon drop as spring kicks in across the northern hemisphere, trees budding forth an army of leaves hungrily sucking CO2 out of the sky.
…
In the coming year, Scientific American will run an occasional series, “400 ppm,” to examine what this invisible line in the sky means for the global climate, the planet and all the living things on it, including human civilization.
Sorry, we already beat you to it when it comes to summing up what it means:
Since the world hasn’t ended (just like what happened with Y2K) we can now go forward from here.
T-shirts saying “I survived 400 PPM” will be made available if there’s enough interest in comments.
UPDATE: T-shirts now available due to popular demand. See here:
Only 1 in 2500 !.
1 in 2000 would be better for plant life, but that is only 500ppm
Scientific America is following in the footsteps of Business Week. The inside joke was the current mania (dot.com and so on) would crash soon after tBusiness Week ran a special on the mania in question.
It obvious that the warmists are struggling to distract the discussion away from the fact that planetary temperature rise has stopped.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/CMIP5-global-LT-vs-UAH-and-RSS.png
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2013/04/global-warming-slowdown-the-view-from-space/
As the planet resists forcing changes by an increase or decrease of clouds in the tropics reflecting more or less sunlight off into space, rather than amplifies warming, the warming due to a doubling of atmospheric CO2 will be less than 1C. Plant growth will increase in a response to the higher CO2 levels. Most of the warming will occur at high latitudes where the growing season is limited by the number of frost free days. The biosphere will expand and will be more productive. Sounds like a win-win situation for the biosphere.
This is a link to a review paper that was prepared by EPA’s own scientist that supports the assertion that the research and analysis does not support the extreme AGW paradigm. The EPA buried the report. The EPA and IPCC of course are completely ignoring the data and logic that indicates the majority of the 20th/21st warming was not due to the rise in atmospheric CO2.
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/endangermentcommentsv7b1.pdf
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/DOUGLASPAPER.pdf
“ A comparison of tropical temperature trends with model predictions
We examine tropospheric temperature trends of 67 runs from 22 ‘Climate of the 20th Century’ model simulations and try to reconcile them with the best available updated observations (in the tropics during the satellite era). Model results and observed temperature trends are in disagreement in most of the tropical troposphere, being separated by more than twice the uncertainty of the model mean. In layers near 5 km, the modelled trend is 100 to 300% higher than observed, and, above 8 km, modelled and observed trends have opposite signs. These conclusions contrast strongly with those of recent publications based on essentially the same data.”
http://www.johnstonanalytics.com/yahoo_site_admin/assets/docs/LindzenChoi2011.235213033.pdf
“On the Observational Determination of Climate Sensitivity and Its Implications by Richard S. Lindzen and Yong-Sang Choi
We again find that the outgoing radiation resulting from SST fluctuations exceeds the zerofeedback response thus implying negative feedback. In contrast to this, the calculated TOA outgoing radiation fluxes from 11 atmospheric models forced by the observed SST are less than the zerofeedback response, consistent with the positive feedbacks that characterize these models. …. … CO2, a relatively minor greenhouse gas, has increased significantly since the beginning of the industrial age from about 280 ppmv to about 390 ppmv, presumably due mostly to man’s emissions. This is the focus of current concerns. However, warming from a doubling of CO2 would only be about 1C (based on simple calculations where the radiation altitude and the Planck temperature depend on wavelength in accordance with the attenuation coefficients of well mixed CO2 molecules; a doubling of any concentration in ppmv produces the same warming because of the logarithmic dependence of CO2’s absorption on the amount of CO2) (IPCC, 2007). This modest warming is much less than current climate models suggest for a doubling of CO2.
CO2 at 400ppm is newsworthy, it seems.
CO2 at 500 ppm will be a far rounder number.
Watch fire the fireworks then, in the media. But probably not in the physical world.
Can we reset the baseline now please. A nice round number would stop beings such as Gore from getting so easily confusified.
“A doubling of CO2 from 0.04% (400ppmv) to 0.08% (800ppmv) may raise global temperatures by @1%C.” AAaaah.
Personally I will still bet that, all other things considered, we will eventually find a CS for a doubling of around about … nearly, approximately, as close as dammit …. 0.0C +/- 0.0001C
8)
DirkH says at May 10, 2013 at 1:59 pm
“BTW, a higher CO2 level in your blood promotes oxygen release from haemoglobin and that’s why you let hyperventilating people breathe into a bag to rebreathe their own CO2.”
Hmm… new scare then.
Exercise is less efficient in a higher CO2 atmosphere therefore, fossil fuels cause the rise in obesity.
And it will prove true, too. When countries get mass car-ownership the obesity levels will rise.
“We must take immediate action to solve this crisis. Not tomorrow, not next week, not next year. Now.” So immediately get your checkbook and make out a check for your entire balance and send it by Express Mail to All Gorge, 10 Tobacco Cough Way, Gnashville, Tennessee. The poor boy needs the money as usual.
Bruce Cobb says: May 10, 2013 at 12:50 pm
“T-shirt I’d like to see:
400 ppm!
Great for Plants and People.
No discernible effect on climate.
What’s not to love?”
Like that but how about being more accessible?
“T-shirt I’d like to see:
400 ppm!
Great for Plants
Let’s recycle and eat the crops.
No discernible effect on climate.
What’s not to love?”
Rather than “I survived 400 ppm,” I’d rather see a monster truck or coal-fired power plant with “I did my part to get to 400!”
More “In yo face.”
davidmhoffer says:
May 10, 2013 at 1:22 pm
Heh. How about a two sided t-shirt?
CO2 graph on the front, and RSS from 1998 to now on the back.
They can even be combined on the same side to produce an X. Interpret the X as you please. See:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1997.9/plot/rss/from:1997.9/trend/plot/esrl-co2/from:1997.9/normalise/offset:0.3/plot/esrl-co2/from:1997.9/normalise/offset:0.3/trend
M Courtney says:
May 10, 2013 at 2:10 pm
“Hmm… new scare then.
Exercise is less efficient in a higher CO2 atmosphere therefore, fossil fuels cause the rise in obesity.”
Well, you would probably get away with it in any scientific journal, but it’s not true; your blood is slightly more acidic, this enables hemoglobin to release oxygen faster, and your muscle performance should rise. There are breathing exercises, forgot the name of the guy who promotes them, where you breathe in exclusively through the nose, very deep and long, and release the breath very slowly. I once saw an interview with a guy who was used to breathing in this way, and it was a little irritating, he talked for quite a while, then paused and breathed in through the nose, then talked for a minute again.
And a healthy grown up has simply enormous lung overcapacity. So you won’t really notice the 1000 ppm. The lungs age irreversibly, that’s why we develop the overcapacity in the first place.
700ppm .. upward and onward.. Yee-haw !! :-)))
Let Mother Earth flourish as she once did. !
If my maths is right – and it’s a lo-o-o-ong time since I used Base 8 – decimal 400 ppm is octal 620 parts per decimal million. I hope that’s less scary, Al; they’re octal numbers, that’s all.
In the UK weeds, and house-trained plants, too – are going gangbusters – now we’ve a bit of Sun and temperatures appreciably above freezing.
Not the CO2, obviously, as we’re all dead, so I guess it’s the flapping of a fritillary’s wings.
Considering that CO2 levels were measured at levels close to 500ppm during the years covering WWII and quickly fell back post-war, what does this say about residence panics so often bandied about? As far as I can see, there is little that can really be classed as ‘unprecedented’ if anything.
If you can get an XXL (and a generous XXL at that) I could be tempted to buy a T-Shirt.
Re: “Al Gore calls for a day of prayer and reflection, and bothering your neighbor. . . ”
Calls to mind a line by R. Emmett Tyrrell: “The liberal’s main goal in life is to annoy his neighbor.”
“‘hungrily sucking CO2 out of the sky’”
That’s what you do when you have been on bread and water rations for 200,000+ years. . .
then there becomes nearly enough to have a decent feed. !!
280ppm was biosphere “survival” amount… war rations, so to speak.
400ppm.. the plants are now doing ok, they don’t have to struggle so much to get a decent feed.
700ppm +.. will be a feast ! 🙂
GeeJam said in part on May 10, 2013 at 11:14 am:
> Oh and one other thing. Of the 0.04% of the total atmosphere being
> CO2 (400 ppm), 96.775% of this total 400 ppm is still naturally
> occurring. No change. Still the same.
Since probably sometime in the early 20th century, nature has had
net effect of removing CO2 from the atmosphere. The increase since
then is less than man-made CO2 emissions.
Link to carbon budget figures for 1959-2010:
http://www.tyndall.ac.uk/global-carbon-budget-2010
I suggest in addition to the T-shirt start a sideline mail order business
Save the planet !
Order bottled CO2 at 400ppm.
Skeptics are not welcome.
vukcevic says:
May 10, 2013 at 12:02 pm
davidmhoffer says:
May 10, 2013 at 11:25 am
Impending Ice Age
Ozone Depletion
Acid Rain
Toxic Rain
Y2K
Bird Flu
Swine Flu
Global Economic Collapse (fossil fuel depletion)
Global Starvation (population exceeding food supply)
Impending Warm Age
and
End of the world December 21, 2012
*************************************************************************************************
Don’t forget ocean acidification! It’s no more insane than all the others.
If I can pay by credit card put me down for a t-shirt (not Paypal).
Steve T
‘Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.’
– C.S.Lewis
milodonharlani said in part, on May 10, 2013 at 12:12 pm
> Actually the Pacific Northwest west of the Cascades and coast ranges
>is a jungle, if that means “rain forest”. By a jungle is usually meant a
>tropical rain forest. The climax state of the western Pacific NW is a
>temperate rain forest. Without humans, even the floor of the Willamette
>Valley would be covered with towering, old growth western hemlock trees.
“Jungle” has another meaning, which appears to me as more accepted
than as a word for rainforest. A major meaning of “jungle” is dense
ground-level human-height vegetation, that impairs human movement
unless it is cut away. Tropical rainforests typically have little of this
jungle except at edges streams, rivers or lakes.
DirkH says:
May 10, 2013 at 2:22 pm
M Courtney says:
May 10, 2013 at 2:10 pm
“Hmm… new scare then.
Exercise is less efficient in a higher CO2 atmosphere therefore, fossil fuels cause the rise in obesity.”
Well, you would probably get away with it in any scientific journal, but it’s not true; your blood is slightly more acidic, this enables hemoglobin to release oxygen faster, and your muscle performance should rise. There are breathing exercises, forgot the name of the guy who promotes them, where you breathe in exclusively through the nose, very deep and long, and release the breath very slowly. I once saw an interview with a guy who was used to breathing in this way, and it was a little irritating, he talked for quite a while, then paused and breathed in through the nose, then talked for a minute again.
And a healthy grown up has simply enormous lung overcapacity. So you won’t really notice the 1000 ppm. The lungs age irreversibly, that’s why we develop the overcapacity in the first place.
*******************************************************************************************
I think the name of the guy who developed the method you referred to is Dr. Konstantin Buteyko. (The Buteyko Method). Sadly he died a few years back in his late eighties/early nineties and one day will be far better known.
I can personally vouch for his method for overcoming breathing difficulties, asthma etc. The method is far easier to adopt the younger one is, but it is still a good technique to know even when one is as old as me and struggling to breathe.
The technique is actually slow shallow breathing (only through the nose) and works by increasing the carbon dioxide in the bloodstream, which as you say improves the release of oxygen from the hemoglobin, reducing that suffocating feeling that most asthmatics know so well.
Steve T
Donald L. Klipstein says:
May 10, 2013 at 2:44 pm
GeeJam said in part on May 10, 2013 at 11:14 am:
> Oh and one other thing. Of the 0.04% of the total atmosphere being
> CO2 (400 ppm), 96.775% of this total 400 ppm is still naturally
> occurring. No change. Still the same.
Since probably sometime in the early 20th century, nature has had
net effect of removing CO2 from the atmosphere. The increase since
then is less than man-made CO2 emissions.
###
BZZT Wrong answer. If your brain was not so overloaded with leftist propaganda, you might have been able to figure out were you went wrong before you made a fool of yourself. Hint: Sources are independent of sinks. Sheesh. Didn’t your mom teach you any DiffEq?
Steve T says:
May 10, 2013 at 3:17 pm
###
Its lactic acid that causes hemoglobin to release oxygen, as any teleost fish will tell you (its how the swim bladder works).
grumpydenier says:
May 10, 2013 at 2:33 pm
Considering that CO2 levels were measured at levels close to 500ppm during the years covering WWII and quickly fell back post-war
The 500 ppmv were taken at the wrong places: over land where one can measure 600 ppmv during inversion at night and 250 ppm during a sunny day… Not remotely representative for global levels. Think about the quantities involved, if that were global figures: the equivalent of burning 1/3rd of all land vegetation on and regrowing it in a few years time. Even not possible in war times. Measurements taken over the oceans in the previous years show values around the ice core levels for the same periods.
They told us that 350ppm was the safe limit and higher would spell calamity. Today we see the calamity of 15+ years of no statistically significant temperature rise and several years of slight cooling. This is their calamity not ours.